As you can tell from IDC’s chart, the competition last quarter wasn’t even close:

According to IDC, even as competitors have released new tablets in the last year, Apple has only put more distance between itself and those tablet makers, moving from a 62 percent share of the tablet market in the second quarter of 2011, to a 68 percent share in the second quarter of this year.

Samsung, thanks to its Galaxy Tab, and Amazon with its Kindle Fire, also saw their shares of the market rise, Samsung from 7 percent to almost 10 percent, and Amazon from nothing to five percent. That almost every top tablet maker saw a little bit of growth (save poor Acer), means that the overall base of people buying tablets is expanding.

And the end of this year should see an even bigger expansion, thanks to the just-released Nexus 7 from Google, new products from Amazon, and Microsoft’s Surface, which is expected to arrive in late October.

But an influx of new alternatives to the iPad isn’t without potential complications, IDC points out in its report. “If anything, there’s a real risk that people will have too many options from which to choose this holiday season,” writes IDC analyst Bob O’Donnell. “Consumers baffled by the differences between Amazon and Google versions of Android, or Windows 8 and Windows RT, may well default to market leader Apple. Or they may simply choose to remain on the sideline for another cycle.”